Chief Zee's Successor?

Children, don't be afraid to dream big. There's nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it. That's why a 45-year old hair salon owner from Fort Washington, Anthony Jordan, thinks he could someday replace a legend, Chief Zee.

"I want to be the next big chief," said Jordan, who calls himself Chief J Strongbow and runs the Hair Jordan salon. "I want to be his protege. He's Zee, I'm J....I'd love to hear from Zee, and I'd love if he gave me the opportunity to appoint me his new protege whenever he's ready."

Controversial, I know, and no one's ready for Chief Zee to go anywhere, but it's nice to know there are other men willing to....well, however you describe this.

In the case of "Chief J Strongbow," who's been dressing up for three years, this includes a new $320 headdress purchased on the Internet especially for the Dallas game, a tomahawk made of several nerf products and a nerf dot blower bought at the Dollar Store, feathers procured from his previous headdress, a chest protector found for $30, Redskins sneakers, a Redskins watch, and a bunch of exposed American flesh.

When I caught up with him, he said he was averaging 75 photos with fans an hour; he's also been on Comcast SportsyNet, the NFL Network and ESPN, and, just today, on The Redskins Blog.

"To tell you the truth, I love the attention," he said.

I never would have guessed. But in truth, most of the fans streaming up for photos were Cowboys fans, which nicely echoed Chief Zee's oft-stated appreciation of Cowboys fandom.

"People don't want to recognize it, but there's a lot of love between the Redskins and Dallas," J said. "We may not like each other as teams, but as far as the fan base there's a lot of love here. The fans have one thing in common: we love to hate each other. That's undeniable. If nothing else, we love to hate."

Jim Zorn actually touched on the whole hate issue during his Monday media address, when he was asked yet again to assess this rivalry.

"I felt much like I felt in the past about rivalries," he said. "You know, it's just a big game. And I didn't have a sense of hate or anything. I didn't have secret t-shirts on underneath saying 'Beat Dallas' or anything like that."

Which means, what, he wore "Beat Oakland" t-shirts as a Seahawk? "Raider-Busters, absolutely," he said.

Anyhow, the Skins fans were out all over the place on Sunday. They "Smoooooted" things up after pass deflections, "Cooooooooleyd" their way through pass catches, and sang "Hail to the Redskins repeatedly. As seen below, they also waved Redskins flags above sacred statues, and, as in the case of Abilene-based Skins fan Mike Vails, showed off their Redskins tattoos.

"I love it," Vails said of his own dose of attention. "I eat it up. This is the best game of the year. When the Skins play Dallas, there's nothing like it in the world. The best [bleeping] rivalry in sports."

Chief Zee's vaguely inappropriate caricature of a Native American is passable because he's an old dude who comes from a time when we didn't know better. But if you were born in the 1950s or later, you really should get the memo that dressing up in an exaggerated guise of another culture is kinda tacky. I'm fine with keeping the team's name, but do we really need to extend traditions like this? Can't this guy put on a dress and cozy up to the Hogettes?

If he wants to be Chief Zee's successor, he's gotta man up, dress up in full rig, and walk through the Philly parking lots to the Linc by himself come Sunday. If he can take his beating like Chief Zee did back in '83, and still come back for more, well, maybe then he'll be ready for the apprenticeship.